The Jerusalem Post reports that a Western diplomatic source
told Iraqi daily Azzaman that the attack took place more
than 48 hours before it was leaked by Israel.

Furthermore, the source said the reports about a strike on a
convoy carrying weapons into Lebanon were probably meant to
divert attention away from the operation's main
objective: To use F-16 aircraft to fire at least eight guided
missiles at a military research center near Damascus.

On Wednesday U.S. officials — who said they were given
forewarning of the strike —
told The Wall Street Journal and other outlets that the
Israelis were targeting a convoy of trucks allegedly carrying
Russian-made SA-17 missiles to Hezbollah.

Syria
insisted that the reports about the convoy attack were
"baseless," and that the real target was a military research
center in Jamraya, which lies about three miles from Damascus and
eight miles from the Lebanese border.

The Azzaman source said that the complex is heavily fortified and
houses experts from Russia and has been guarded for years
by at least three thousand Iranian Revolutionary Guards,
adding that the Guards suffered heavy casualties in the strike.

The Syrian rebel commander in the Damascus area
told Reuters that rebels attacked the facility with "six 120
millimeter mortars" at about the same time that Israeli planes
bombed the convoy.

But there has been no confirmation of the convoy attack besides
unnamed diplomatic and rebel sources saying it occurred
three miles south of where the main Damascus-Beirut highway
crosses the border into Lebanon.

AFP

Nevertheless, both strikes fit Israel's
strategy.

The Associated Press reports that "Israeli military officials
appear to have concluded that the risks of attacking Syria are
worth taking when compared to the dangers of allowing
sophisticated weapons to reach Hezbollah guerrillas."

Transfer of the missiles "would
be a game changer ... by challenging the ability of Israel's
air force to carry out daily surveillance flights over southern
Lebanon and eastern Lebanon along the border with Syria,"
Jonathan Spyer, an analyst at the Interdisciplinary Center in
Israel, told USA Today.

The attack comes at a time when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
is too weak to risk opening a new front with Israel by
retaliating.

"Syria is in such a bad state right now that an Israeli
retaliation to a Syrian action would be harsh and could topple
the regime," Moshe Maoz, a professor emeritus at Hebrew
University who specializes in Syria, told AP. "Therefore Syria is
not responding."

Meanwhile Iran is busy
propping up Assad. On Thursday U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton said there are signs that Iran is sending
growing numbers of people and increasingly sophisticated weaponry
to Assad since he's using up his weaponry.

And Israel appears to have the support of the West. On Thursday
UK
Foreign Secretary William Hague said that rather than
condemning the the attack, attention should be focused on
addressing ''the root causes'' of the Syrian crisis. The
White House warned Syria not to transfer weapons to
Hezbollah.

Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi told the AP that Israel has no
choice but to launch pinpoint strikes on suspected transfers.

"Israel's preference would be if a Western entity would control
these weapons systems," Hanegbi said. "But because it appears the
world is not prepared to do what was done in Libya or other
places, then Israel finds itself like it has many times
in the past facing a dilemma that only it knows how to respond
to."

Whether one believes that Israel attacked a convoy or the
Jamraya facility — or both — matters less than the
fact that Israel has dealt a forceful blow to Syria and
Iran while sending a stark message to Hezbollah.